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Brother, Can You Spare A Dime
"Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" is one of the best-known American songs of the Great Depression. Written by lyricist Yip Harburg and composer Jay Gorney, it was part of the 1932 musical theater, musical revue ''Americana (revue), Americana''; the melody is based on a Russian-Jewish lullaby. The song tells the story of the universal everyman, whose honest work towards achieving the American dream has been foiled by the economic collapse. Unusual for a Broadway song, it was composed largely in a minor key. The song became best known through recordings by Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallée that were released in late 1932. The song received positive reviews and was one of the most popular songs of 1932. As one of the few popular songs during the era to discuss the darker aspects of the collapse, it came to be viewed as an anthem of the Great Depression. Background The Great Depression in the United States, which started with the 1929 Wall Street crash, had a severe impact on the country ...
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Americana (revue)
''Americana'' is a musical revue in two parts, with book and lyrics by J. P. McEvoy, and music by Con Conrad with additional numbers by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Philip Charig, James F. Hanley, James Hanley, B. G. DeSylva, Morrie Ryskind, Arthur Schwartz, Theo Goodwin, Joe Young (lyricist), Joe Young, and Sam M. Lewis, Sam Lewis. The show was presented by Richard Herndon at the The Belmont Theatre, Belmont Theatre (121 W. 48th Street, New York, NY), and, after many postponements, opened July 26, 1926. The show was staged by Allan Dinehart with dance numbers by Larry Ceballos. The production was designed by John Held Jr., John Held, Jr. It ran for 224 performances, closing in February 1927. The cast headlined Lew Brice, Roy Atwell, Betty Compton, Charles Butterworth (actor), Charles Butterworth and the Eddie Elkins Orchestra. ''The New York Times'' review called it a "witty, ingenious and sophisticated evening of fun-making, it made up in its abundant humor for more than it l ...
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Yankee Doodle
"Yankee Doodle" is a traditional song and nursery rhyme, the early versions of which predate the Seven Years' War and American Revolutionary War. It is often sung patriotically in the United States today. It is the state song of the U.S. state of Connecticut. Its Roud Folk Song Index number is 4501. Origin The tune of "Yankee Doodle" is thought to be much older than the lyrics, being well known across western Europe, including England, France, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Spain. Johnson, Helen Kendrick The melody of the song may have originated from an Irish tune "All the way to Galway", in which the second strain is identical to Yankee Doodle. There are rumors that the earliest words of "Yankee Doodle" came from a Middle Dutch harvest song which is thought to have followed the same tune, supposedly dating back as far as 15th-century Holland. It supposedly contained mostly nonsense words in English and Dutch: "Yanker, didel, doodle down, Diddle, dudel, lanther, Yanke ...
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Harry Roy
Harry Roy (12 January 1900 – 1 February 1971) was a British dance band leader and clarinet player from the 1920s to the 1960s. He performed several songs with suggestive lyrics, including " My Girl's Pussy" (1931), and " She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor" (1939) and "When Can I have a Banana Again?" (1943) Life and career Roy was born Harry Lipman in Stamford Hill, London, England to a Jewish family and after learning piano from the age of seven, went on to study clarinet and alto saxophone at the age of 16. He and his brother Sidney formed a band which they called the Darnswells Dance Band, with Harry on saxophone and clarinet and Sidney on piano. During the 1920s, they performed in several prestige venues, such as the Alhambra and the London Coliseum, in bands such as the Original Lyrical Five and the Crichton Lyricals. They had a three-year residency at the Café de Paris, and toured South Africa, Australia and Germany. By the early 1930s, Harry Roy was fronting his ...
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Tom Waits
Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American musician, composer, songwriter, and actor. His lyrics often focus on society's underworld and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He began in the American folk music, folk scene during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected the influence of such diverse genres as Rock music, rock, jazz, Delta blues, opera, vaudeville, cabaret, funk and experimental techniques verging on industrial music. Tom Waits was born and raised in a middle-class family in Pomona, California. Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, he began singing on the San Diego folk circuit. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, where he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records. His debut album was Closing Time (album), ''Closing Time'' (1973), followed by ''The Heart of Saturday Night'' (1974) and ''Nighthawks at the Diner'' (1975). He repeatedly toured the United States, Eu ...
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Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer-songwriter and musician with a career spanning nearly seven decades. An Academy Awards, Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Awards, Grammy Award-winning recording artist, she is known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk music, country music, country, show tunes, pop music, rock and roll and Traditional pop, standards), for her social activism, and for the clarity of her voice. Judy Collins discography, Her discography consists of 36 studio albums, nine live albums, numerous compilation albums, four holiday albums, and 21 single (music), singles. Collins' debut studio album, ''A Maid of Constant Sorrow'', was released in 1961 and consisted of traditional Folk music, folk songs. She had her first charting single with "Hard Lovin' Loser" (No. 97) from her fifth studio album ''In My Life (Judy Collins album), In My Life'' (1966), but it was the lead single ...
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Al Jolson
Al Jolson (born Asa Yoelson, ; May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian-born American singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian. Self-billed as "The World's Greatest Entertainer," Jolson was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1920s, as well as the first openly Jewish man to become an entertainment star in the United States. He was known for his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach" towards performing, along with popularizing many of the songs he sang. According to music historian Larry Stempel, "No one had heard anything quite like it before on Broadway." Stephen Banfield wrote that Jolson's style was "arguably the single most important factor in defining the modern musical." Jolson has been referred to by modern critics as "the king of blackface performers". Although best remembered today as the star of the first talking picture, ''The Jazz Singer'' (1927), he starred in a series of successful musical films during the 1930 ...
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Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Music Group, an American division of multinational conglomerate Sony. Founded in 1889, Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels, along with Epic Records, RCA Records and Arista Records. History Beginnings (1888–1929) The Columbia Phonograph Company was founded on January 15, 1889, by stenographer, lawyer, and New Jersey native Edward D. Easton (1856–1915) and a group of investors. It derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered. At first it had a local monopoly on sales and service of Edison ...
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Rudy Vallee
Rudy or Rudi is a masculine given name, sometimes short for Rudolf, Rudolph, Rawad, Rudra, Ruairidh, or variations thereof, a nickname and a surname which may refer to: People Given name or nickname *Rudolf Rudy Andeweg (born 1952), Dutch political scientist *Rudolf Rudi Assauer (1944–2019), German football manager and player *Rudolf Rudy Ballieux (1930–2020), Dutch immunologist *Rudi Carrell (1934–2006), Dutch television entertainer * Rudy D'Amico (born 1940), American National Basketball Association scout, and former college and professional basketball coach * Rudy Demotte (born 1963), Belgian politician *Rudi Dil, birth name of Ruud Gullit (born 1962), Dutch retired football manager and player * Rudi Dolezal (born 1958), Austrian film director and film producer *Rüdiger Rudi Dornbusch (1942–2002), German economist *Alfred Willi Rudolf Rudi Dutschke (1940–1979), the most prominent spokesperson of the 1960s German student movement * Rudy Florio (born 1950), Canad ...
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Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916. History 1916–1929 Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a company based in Dubuque, Iowa which had been manufacturing products ranging from pianos to sporting equipment since 1845. The company first began producing phonographs in 1916, then began marketing their own line of records as an afterthought. These first Brunswick records used the vertical cut system like Edison Disc Records, and were not sold in large numbers. They were recorded in the United States but sold only in Canada. In January 1920, a new line of Brunswick Records was introduced in the U.S. and Canada that employed the lateral cut system which was becoming the default cut for 78 discs. Brunswick started its standard popular series at 2000 and ended up in 1940 at 8517. However, when the series reached 4999, they skipped over the previous allocated 5000s and continued at 6000. When the ...
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Hatikvah
Hatikvah (, ; ) is the national anthem of the Israel, State of Israel. Part of 19th-century Jewish literature, Jewish poetry, the theme of the Romantic poetry, Romantic composition reflects the 2,000-year-old desire of the Jews, Jewish people to return to the Land of Israel in order to History of the Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel, reclaim it as a free and sovereign nation-state. The piece's lyrics are adapted from a work by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Zolochiv, Lviv Oblast#The Austro-Hungarian Imperial Period (1772–1918), Złoczów, Austrian Galicia. Imber wrote the first version of the poem in 1877, when he was hosted by a Jewish scholar in Iași. History Text The text of Hatikvah was written in 1878 by Naftali Herz Imber, a Jewish poet from Zolochiv, Lviv Oblast, Zolochiv (), a city nicknamed "The City of Poets", then in Austrian Poland, today in Ukraine. His words "Lashuv le'eretz avotenu" (to return to the land of our forefathers) expressed its aspi ...
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Tablet Magazine
''Tablet'' is a conservative American magazine focused on Jewish news and culture, featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, and essays. It was founded in 2009 by editor-in-chief Alana Newhouse and is supported by the Nextbook foundation. Tablet’s website, print edition, and logo were all designed by Pentagram. History ''Tablet'' was founded as a web magazine in June 2009 by Alana Newhouse, former culture editor at '' The Forward'', with the support of the Nextbook foundation as a rebranded and news-focused version of the Jewish literary journal ''Nextbook.'' In the three years after its founding, ''New York Magazine'' described ''Tablet'' as a "must-read for young politically and culturally engaged Jews". Its reporting has largely focused on Jewish news and culture. In June 2025, ''Tablet'' debuted its print edition. It had launched and then halted publication of a glossy print edition previously; that iteration was also designed bPentagram In February 2015, '' ...
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Harold Meyerson
Harold Meyerson (born 1950) is an American journalist, opinion columnist and socialist. In 2009 ''The Atlantic Monthly'' named him one of "the most influential commentators in the nation" as part of their list "The Atlantic 50." Early life and education Meyerson was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles. He was educated in the Los Angeles public schools and at Columbia University. The son of long time leaders in California of the Socialist Party of America, he was active in the 1970s in the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. Career Meyerson is editor-at-large of ''The American Prospect'' and was an opinion columnist for ''The Washington Post'' from 2003 until 2015, when he was fired by the latter. Some speculate that the firing was politically motivated and related to the 2016 electoral season and the rise of Bernie Sanders. He served as executive editor of the '' L.A. Weekly'' from 1989 through 2001, and continues to write about California politics in the ''Los Angele ...
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